From the earliest days of man's shelter, there has existed a need to penetrate a roof with either a chimney or other pipe or outlet while maintaining integrity of the roof against the elements of rain and snow. The advent of vented plumbing systems requires that a residence or business building have a significant number of vents which penetrate the roof. As a result, countless structures have been evolved through the years to seal openings in roofs. The devices which are used to seal are commonly called "vent seals", "roof jacks" or "pitch boxes". They all require some means for securing the vent seal or roof jack to the roof surface and some means to seal the vent seal or roof jack to a pipe or conduit exiting the roof. A further requirement is that the vent seal or roof jack can accommodate to the size of the vent, the roof surface material and roof pitch. In achieving all of these requirements, the structures have become unduly complex, increasing in cost and difficult to install.
Examples of prior art devices facing this problem are illustrated in the following patents:
______________________________________ U.S. Pat. No. 4,768,812 B. Katz Sept. 6, 1988 U.S. Pat. No. 4,730,421 D. F. Leeland March 15, 1988 U.S. Pat. No. 4,563,847 W. E. Hasty Jan. 14, 1986 U.S. Pat. No. 4,280,305 D. D. Logsdon July 28, 1981 U.S. Pat. No. 4,265,058 D. D. Logsdon May 5, 1981 U.S. Pat. No. 4,115,961 R. L. Bishop Sept. 26, 1978 U.S. Pat. No. 4,010,578 D. D. Logsdon March 8, 1977 U.S. Pat. No. 3,945,163 Nagler, et al March 23, 1976 U.S. Pat. No. 3,797,181 F. J. Nievelt March 19, 1974. ______________________________________ None of the above references meet the objective of a single design of a single unitary structure capable of effectively sealing a roof vent of variety of sizes to a roof of a variety of pitches. Likewise, none of the prior art vent seals are particularly easy to install with the assurance of a tight seal.
Likewise, prior art roof jacks or vent seals have not been designed to effectively seal on non-planar roofs such as corrugated tile roofs.